Part 3

"No, on father's," said Susan, "and now, Mrs. Lathrop, you see what he is at last. He not only marries a Chinese when if he'd been patient he might have got a white one, but he brings her home, and don't even tell you he's brought her home, or even that he's got her, or even that he's married her, or anything. A man might line my house with furnaces and have his baby picture done big in every room, and I'd never forgive his acting in such a way. I never hear the beat. It throws all the other calamities as ever come upon anybody in this community clean out of the shade. What will be the use of your having a pew in church; you won't even be able to face the minister now with your son's marrying one of them as we have to give our good money to teach to wear clothes. What good will your having the parlor papered be with everybody ashamed to go to see a woman who has got a Chinese daughter. To my order of thinking, you was better off poor. Why, they eat the hen's nests, the Chinese do, and prefer 'em to the eggs. It's small wonder I dreamed Jathrop was a cat, with him descending on us like the wrath of heaven married to a China woman. Jathrop's no fool though, and if you'd seen that humble heathen going along back of him with his big valise, you'd have to see as the man as picks out a wife like that never could have been a fool. I felt for her, I really did, only she was watching me with the wrong eye all the time, and it made me dizzy to try and look at her kindly. I'll tell you what, Mrs. Lathrop, when Jathrop comes back, you'll just go for him and give it to him good. Men must learn as they can't bring their Chinese wives into this community. There's a principle as we'd ought to live up to whether we enjoy it or not, and it's all against marrying Chinese. The Chinese are all right, I hope and trust, but nothing as feeds itself with a toothpick had ever ought to be held pressed to the bosom of families like you and me, Mrs. Lathrop. It isn't the way we're brought up to look at them, and it's a well-known fact as no matter what the leopard does to the Ethiopian, he sticks to his spot just the same as before--"

"But--" broke in Mrs. Lathrop.

"I don't want to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Lathrop,--we've been friends too long for me not to feel kindly to you,--but Mrs. Macy is a witness to his bringing her, even if I wasn't well known to be one as never lies. Mrs. Macy is a witness, too, to how he's got her dressed, and a more burning disgrace than this keeping your chosen wife in loose overalls and a jacket as any monkey on a hand-organ would weep to see the fit of, I never see. It may be the custom in the Klondike and may be convenient for sliding, but this is no sliding community, and, to my order of thinking, Jathrop would have showed you more affection and us more respect if he'd bought his wife a bonnet and a shawl before he brought her here."

Susan paused for breath. Mrs. Lathrop continued speechless. Mrs. Macy tried to lighten the atmosphere by remarking, "Lands, she's got a pigtail, too."

Susan picked up the cudgels afresh at that. "Wound twice around her head," she said bitterly; "oh, she _is_ a figure of fun and no mistake. I d'n know, I'm sure, what Jathrop was ever thinking of the day he picked her out, but this I do know, and that is, that he'd better pick her off of me pretty quick. You know, Mrs. Lathrop, as a friend is a friend and I've always been a good friend to you, but I never was one to stand any nonsense--not now and not never--and when a man writes, 'I'm rich' and 'How's Susan Clegg?' he gets me where no Chinese wife ain't going to please me in a hurry. I'm glad Jathrop is rich, on your account, Mrs. Lathrop, but his being rich don't alter my views of him a mite. I look upon him as a gray deceiver, that's what I look upon him as, and if he's brought a piece of carnelian or anything back to me, you can tell him to give it to his lawfully wedded wife, for I don't want to have nothing more to do with him."

"But, Susan--" broke in poor Mrs. Lathrop.

"Don't interrupt me, Mrs. Lathrop; I'm in no mood to listen to no one just now. I ain't mad, but I'm hurt. It's no wonder I dreamed he was a cat, for of all the sly, back-door things a cat is the meanest. And there was always something very cat-like about Jathrop Lathrop--something soft and slow and creepy--nothing bold and out-spoken. I might have known as even if he did come home rich, he'd find a way to even it up. And now look how he has evened it up. Think of your grandchildren; there won't be one of 'em able to ever look anybody straight in more'n one eye at once. Marrying Chinese is terrible, anyway--in some States it's forbidden. It's to be hoped Jathrop'll keep out of those States or he may land in the penitentiary yet."

Just here the front door slammed, and Jathrop's voice was heard calling, "Where are you, mother?"

He didn't wait for an answer, but came straight through the kitchen. Entering there, what he saw startled him so much that he came to a sudden halt.

"We've been telling your--" began Mrs. Macy.

"--mother about your wife," finished up Susan.

Jathrop looked at all three in great astonishment. "About my _wife_!" he repeated. "Did you say 'my wife'?"

"Yes," said Susan, absolutely undaunted. "I think it would have been kinder in you to have broke it to her yourself; but anyhow, we've done it now."

"Oh, Jathrop, my son, my son!" wailed poor Mrs. Lathrop in heart-wringing Biblical paraphrase.

"But I haven't got any wife," said Jathrop. "What under the sun do you mean?"

There was a clammy pause; Susan and Mrs. Macy clasped hands.

"What made you think I had one?" Jathrop asked, quite bewildered. "Who said I had one?"

Susan rose with dignity and coughed. Mrs. Macy rose, too, looking at Susan. Poor Mrs. Lathrop seemed fairly terror-stricken.

"I think I'll go now," said Susan. "I hope I needn't board her much longer, that's all. Even if she's only using the floor, it's a floor as has been sacred to my dead father up to now, and a dead father is not to be lightly took in vain by a heathen Chinee."

"But what does it all mean?" asked Jathrop, appearing genuinely bewildered. "I don't understand. What are you talking about?"

Susan moved toward the door; Mrs. Macy faltered. "Maybe it was all right in the Klondike," she began, trying to put a brace under the situation.

"Maybe what was all right in the Klondike?" asked Jathrop.

"To buy her with beads."

"To buy who with beads? Who's her?" Jathrop's voice was becoming exasperated.

"Hop Loo," said Susan, in a tone of piercing scorn, "the Chinese lady as you brought with you and gave me to board."

Jathrop looked at them all in amazement. "But Hop Loo's a boy--my boy," he said.

"Your boy!" said Susan.

"Yes, my boy."

Miss Clegg turned and gave him a long look fraught with disgust, pity, and hopeless resignation.

"Jathrop Lathrop," she said, "I _did_ suppose you had some sense even in the view of all that's dead and gone, but I guess now I'll have to give up. I did have some respect for you while I thought she was maybe your wife, but if you've gone so clean crazy that you believe that that is your boy--well!"

Susan thereupon sailed out of Mrs. Lathrop's house with Mrs. Macy wobbling in her wake.

III

SUSAN CLEGG SOLVES THE MYSTERY

Susan Clegg and Mrs. Macy walked down to Mrs. Lathrop's gate, and out of her gate and to Miss Clegg's gate; the whole in a silence deadly and impressive. Mrs. Macy paused there.

"I don't believe I'll come in," she said doubtfully.

"I don't blame you," said Susan, "I wouldn't if it was me. Jathrop's boy, indeed! What kind of a man is it as'll have a Chinese family and go forcing them onto the true and long-tried friends of his one and only mother!"

"I can't see why he didn't leave the boy in the Klondike," said Mrs. Macy slowly and reflectively. "I thought men always left their Chinese families just where they found 'em. It's strange Jathrop brought him home with him."

"You see now what my dream meant," said Susan darkly, "a cat, indeed. It's small wonder I knew the cat was Jathrop Lathrop. Of all the mean, sly, creeping creatures that ever come up against the back of your legs sudden a cat is the worst. A snake is open and aboveboard beside a cat. You can see a snake. You don't see 'em often around here, thank heaven."

"Well, we haven't seen Jathrop often around here for a long time," said Mrs. Macy, whose mind was as given to easy logical deduction as many of her mental caliber, "and we do see a lot of cats--you know that, Susan."

"'How's Susan Clegg?'" quoted Susan in a tone of reflective wrath. "I don't know whether you know it or not, Mrs. Macy, but Jathrop asked after me in his letter to his mother, and him with a Chinese wife. 'How's Susan Clegg?' What did he write that for if he was married, I'd like to know."

"Maybe he wanted to know how you were," suggested Mrs. Macy.

The look she received in recognition of this offered explanation led to her immediately proposing to go on home. "You've got the Chinaman to look after, anyhow," she added.

"You'd better come in while I go up and look at him again," said Susan shortly. "It's a very strange sensation to be alone in your house with what you fully and freely take to your dead father's bed and board, supposing it's a wife, and then find out as it's her son instead. Come on in."

Mrs. Macy was easily persuaded, and they thereupon went up the walk. "I guess I'll go see if he's still asleep," Susan said when they reached the piazza, and Mrs. Macy forthwith sat down to await what might come of it.

Susan was absent but a few minutes; she returned with a fresh layer of disapproval upon her face.

"Is he still sleeping?" Mrs. Macy asked.

"Yes, he's still sleeping," Miss Clegg replied, jerking a chair forward for herself. "You'd know he was Jathrop Lathrop's child just by the way he sleeps. You remember what a one Jathrop always was for sleeping. I don't know as I remember Jathrop's ever being awake till he was fairly grown. Whatever you set him at always just made him more sleepy. You know yourself, Mrs. Macy, as he wouldn't be no grasshopper with Mrs. Lathrop for his mother, but a cocoon is a comet beside what Jathrop Lathrop always was. I don't know whether he's rich or not, but I do know that heathen Chinee is his son, and I know it just by the way he sleeps."

"And so Jathrop's rich," said Mrs. Macy, rocking agreeably to and fro, and evidently striving toward more pleasant conversation.

"Yes," said Susan darkly, "rich and with a Chinese wife somewhere. Just as often as I think of Jathrop Lathrop writing, 'How's Susan Clegg,' with a Chinese wife I feel more and more tempered, and I can't conceal my feelings. I never was one to conceal anything; if I had a Chinese wife the whole world might know it."

Just here Gran'ma Mullins hove in sight, coming slowly and laboriously up the street.

"Why, there's Gran'ma Mullins!" Mrs. Macy exclaimed. "She's surely coming to see you, too."

Both ladies remained silent, watching the progress of Gran'ma Mullins.

Gran'ma Mullins arrived a good deal out of breath. Susan brought a chair out of the house for her.

"I come to--tell you," panted the new visitor as soon as she had attained unto the chair, "that Jathrop's--things is--coming."

"What things?" asked Susan.

"They all come on--the ten o'clock--from the junction; Hiram is helping unload."

"What's he brought?" Susan asked.

"Well, he's brought an automobile," said Gran'ma Mullins, "and a lot of other trunks and boxes."

"An automobile!" exclaimed Mrs. Macy, "well, he _is_ rich then!"

"I wouldn't be too sure of that," said Susan, "some very poor folks is riding that way nowadays."

"And he brought three trunks and seventeen big wooden boxes," continued Gran'ma Mullins, "big boxes."

"Three trunks and sev-en-teen--Three trunks and sev-en--" Susan's voice faded into nothingness.

"Goodness knows what's in them," said Gran'ma Mullins. "Hiram was getting so hot unloading that I wanted him to stop and let me fan him, but he wouldn't hear to it. Hiram's so brave. If he said he'd unload something, he'd unload it if he dropped dead under it and was smashed to nothing."

There was a pause of unlimited bewilderment while Mrs. Macy and Susan raised Jathrop upon the pedestal erected by his three trunks, seventeen boxes and the automobile.

"And to think of his having a Chinese wife," Susan exclaimed, the keen edge of sorrow cutting crossways through all her words.

It was just here that Mrs. Lupey now appeared, approaching at a good pace. Mrs. Lupey was a large, imposing woman and wore a silk dolman with fringe. It was immediately necessary for the party to adjourn to the sitting-room, as the piazza was strictly limited.

It was Mrs. Lupey who without loss of time did away with the Lathrop parentage of the young Chinese.

"Why, he's his servant, of course," she said in a lofty scorn. "I'm surprised you didn't know that by his age."

"I did think of his age," Susan said, "but I read once in some paper as the women in China get married when they're four years old, so you'd never be able to tell nothing by the age of no one there. Well, well, and so she isn't his wife, nor yet his son. Well, I'm glad--for Mrs. Lathrop's sake."

"But if Jathrop's really got a automobile and seventeen trunks, he _must_ be awful rich," said Mrs. Macy. "It'll be a great thing for this town if Jathrop's rich. He'd ought to be very grateful to the place where his happy childhood memories run around barefoot."

"Oh, he'll remember," said Gran'ma Mullins, "it's easy to remember when you've got the money to do it. But I hope to heaven he won't set Hiram off on that track again. Hiram does so want to go away and make a fortune; I'm worried for fear he will all the time. And Lucy wants him to, too. I can't understand a woman as wants a fortune worse than she wants Hiram. Lucy doesn't seem to want Hiram 'round at all any more. If he's asleep, she starts right in making the bed the same as if he wasn't in it, and if she's sewing, he don't dare go within the length of her thread.

"Life has come to a pretty pass when a wife'll run a needle into a husband just for the simple pleasure of feeling him go away when she sticks him." Gran'ma Mullins sighed.

"I wonder what they're doing now!" Mrs. Macy said.

All four turned at this and looked toward the Lathrop house together. It was quiet as usual.

"I d'n know as it changes my opinion of Jathrop much, that being his servant," said Miss Clegg suddenly. "It's kind of different, his handing his wife or his son over to me; but his heathen Chinee servant! I don't know as I'm very pleased."

"Pleased!" said Mrs. Lupey. "Why, in San Francisco they make 'em live underground like rats."

"Maybe that was why you dreamed he was a cat, Susan?" suggested Mrs. Macy, whose brain seemed to grasp at the subject under consideration with special illumination.

Susan rose. "I think you'd better go," she said abruptly, "I've got to get dinner. My mind's in no state to deal with all these sides of Jathrop and his Chinaman just now."

What the day brought up the street and in and around Mrs. Lathrop's house would take too long to catalogue. Suffice it to say that poor Mrs. Lathrop, who had been for long years the veriest zero in the life of the community, became suddenly its center and apex.

When Jathrop went to New York at the end of the week, he left his mother not only sitting, but rocking in the lap of luxury, with her head leaning back against more luxury and her feet braced firmly on yet more luxury. Even her friend over the way was rendered utterly content.

And the pleasantest part of it all was the way that it affected Susan Clegg. As Susan sat by Mrs. Lathrop and turned upon her that tender gaze which one old friend may turn on another old friend when the latter's son has suddenly bloomed forth golden, her full heart found utterance thus:

"Well, Mrs. Lathrop--well, Mrs. Lathrop, I guess no one will ever doubt anything again. Talk about dreams, _now_! I dreamed Jathrop was a cat, and the reason was that it's a well-known fact that cats _always_ come back. Why, Mrs. Macy told me once how she chloroformed a cat, and put it in a flour sack with a stone, and put the sack in a hogshead of water, and put the cover on the hogshead, and put a stone--another stone--on that, and went to church to hear the minister preach on 'Do unto others as you do unto others,' and when she came back, the cat was asleep on top of the hogshead, and Mrs. Macy got the worst shock she ever got. So you can easy see why I dreamed Jathrop was a cat; and he _did_ come back.

"I declare that'll always be the pleasantest recollection of my life, how I met him at the station and how we came chatting up the street together. How he has improved, Mrs. Lathrop--not but what he was always handsome! There was always something noble about Jathrop. Gran'ma Mullins said yesterday as he made her think of a man she saw in a play once as stood on his crossed legs in front of a fire and smoked. So careless.

"And then his bringing Mrs. Macy that polar-bear skin! Mrs. Macy says if there was one spot in the whole wide world where she never expected to set foot it was on top of a polar bear, and now she can stand on her head on one if the fancy takes her. I saw the minister when I was down in the square to-night, and he told me not to speak of it, but he thought a service of prayer for any stocks and mines as Jathrop has would be the only fitting form of gratitude which a reverent and affectionate congregation might offer to the great and glorious generosity of him who is going to give us a steeple after all these years of finishing flat at the top. Mr. Kimball came out to tell me to ask you if you'd like some one to come regularly for your order, and he says he'll keep caviare from now on, just on the chance of Jathrop's being here to eat it; he says why he didn't keep it before was he thought it was a kind of chamois skin.

"It's beautiful to see the faces down-town, Mrs. Lathrop; you never saw nothing like it. Everybody's just so happy. Hiram is grinning from ear to ear over being took to the Klondike, and everybody is swore to not let Gran'ma Mullins know he's going. He's going to climb out of the window at night and get away that way, and Gran'ma Mullins won't mind what she feels when he really does come back a millionaire, too. She'll be just like you, Mrs. Lathrop; no one minds anything once it's over. Little misunderstandings are easy forgot.

"And to think there's been a blue automobile puffing at these very kitchen steps! To think you and me was over to Meadville and back between dinner and supper one day! I guess Mrs. Lupey never got such a start. She'd been all the morning getting home on the train and was only just putting her bonnet away in its box when we rolled up. I never enjoyed nothing like that roll up in all my life! I never see automobiles from the automobile's side before, but now I can. When a automobile goes over a duck it makes all the difference in the world whether it's your automobile or your duck.

"And then Jathrop's generosity! Not but what he was always generous. Deacon White says he will say that for Jathrop, he was always generous. And look what he brought home. Every child in town is just about out of their senses. Felicia Hemans is crazy about the earrings, and 'Liza Em'ly won't never take off the bracelet. Mr. Shores can't keep the tears back when he looks at his watch charm. I think it was so kind of Jathrop. But Jathrop was always kind; you know yourself that a kinder creature never lived than Jathrop. I always said that for him.

"And then his having a new fence built around the cemetery. It was thoughtful, and Judge Fitch says nobody can't say more. But Judge Fitch says Jathrop was always thoughtful; he says he's been interested in him always just for that very reason. Judge Fitch says Jathrop's nature was always that deep kind that's easy overlooked. He says he'll have to confess to his shame that some of the time he overlooked him himself. He says it's very difficult to understand a deep nature, because if a deep nature don't make money, there's hardly any way of ever knowing that it really was deep; people just think you're a fool then--like we always thought Jathrop was. You know, nobody ever thought he ever could amount to nothing. You know that yourself, Mrs. Lathrop. But making money lets you see just what a person's got in 'em and see it plain.

"I'm sure for all I've loved Jathrop as if he was going to be my own, for years and years and years, still I never credited him with being the man he is. I supposed he was a tramp somewhere--yes, I really did, Mrs. Lathrop, you may believe me or not, but that's just what I thought when I thought anything at all about him--which wasn't often.

"Everybody in the whole place is busy remembering pleasant things about him now. The minister's wife remembers his coming to a Christmas tree once a long time ago when they both was little; she says she hasn't thought of it in thirty years, but she remembers it as plain as day now,--he had on a coat and a little tie.

"And Gran'ma Mullins says she never will forget the day before he was born, for she went to town and dropped her little bead bag, and you know how much she thinks of her little bead bag now when the beads is all worn off, so you can think what store she set by it when the beads were still on, and so she was all back and forth along the road hunting for it the whole blessed afternoon, and when she found it and went home, she _was_ tired, and she slept late next morning because her husband was out very late the night before, and when he slept late she always slept late, 'cause she said sleeping late was almost the only treat he ever give her, and, anyhow, when they did wake up and get up and get out, there was Jathrop, and she says she shall never forget her joy over having found the bead bag again.

"Mrs. Macy says she remembers the day he hid, and you thought he was in the cistern, and you was kneeling down looking in when he jumped out from behind the stove and give you such a start you went in head first.

"I remember that day myself, too--father was insisting he was paralyzed then, and mother and me wouldn't take his word for it, and we fully expected he'd race over and help haul you out, but all he said was, 'She'll have to manage the best she can--I'm paralyzed,' and we really began to believe him from then on.

"The minister says he shall always remember how well he looked when he put on long trousers; the minister's preparing a little paper on Jathrop to read at the Sunday-school annual, and he says he shall begin with the day he put on long trousers and then mark his rise step by step. The minister's so pleased over Jathrop's patting Brunhilde Susan on the head; he says there are pats and pats, but that pat that Jathrop give Brunhilde Susan was what he calls, in pure and Biblical simplicity, _a_ pat."

Susan paused. Mrs. Lathrop just felt her diamond solitaires, glanced at the new kitchen range, and was silent.

"And then, Mrs. Lathrop, that dear blessed little Chinese angel--I tell you I shall never forget that boy. I liked his face when I first laid eyes on him, and when I thought he was Jathrop's lawful wife, I loved him as I'd loved even a Chinaman if he was your daughter; but when I saw him cleaning up my sink, polishing my pans, washing out my cupboards and all that, just the same as yours, _then_ was when I see that a heathen Chinee has just the same right to go to heaven that anybody else has, and from then on I just trusted him completely and let him do every bit of the work till he left.